That would be me. I really don't like going outside at dusk by myself. I have a very over active imagination at times, and the darker it gets outside, the more vivid my imagination becomes. Tonight I needed to hang Dwayne's work clothes outside on the line so they would be dry for him in the morning. I turned on the outside light, I turned off the generator (in case I needed to yell for whatever reason and needed someone to hear!), and then I pegged the clothes on the line as quickly as I could whilst ringing a small cow bell I had hung on the line. I didn't want to be surprising bears or cougars while I was on own my own outside and Dwayne and the kids were sleeping soundly inside. The neighbourhood dogs were howling and barking from several directions and I wasn't sure if they were barking because of me or because of something else they could smell on the wind or hear in the distance. Last night there was all manner of howling in the middle of the night but I couldn't discern if it was dogs or wolves. There was also a horrible shriek that I couldn't peg to any particular animal. All of these things, combined with my ridiculously over active imagination meant I had a slight adrenaline rush for those few minutes. Of course nothing happened to me, nor did I see anything peering at me from the forest. At dusk the noises of the night are amplified and it is easier to imagine that things are different than they are in the light.
This is not something exclusive to the outdoors for me. I don't dare read a suspenseful book right before I go to sleep or watch an intense movie alone. Elements of the story seem to become real, and enough so that I don't want to stir from my bed or couch. After watching "Hannibal" alone while attending university, I had to go through my entire apartment room by room, closet by closet, even though logic was telling me that I had been locked in during the entire movie and entirely alone as well. It is hard to shut down my imagination at night. Thankfully I don't often have nightmares, and they never seem to be about suspenseful things I have read or watched but about mundane or normal things gone awry. Somehow in my dreamland I am better able to switch between logic and imagination and reason with myself in sleep saying, "This isn't real." That can either halt my dream entirely or allow me to follow the dream to whatever conclusion it might have without any sense of fear.
Maybe it has something to do with being tired as well. Maybe it's like when toddlers are overtired and instead of sleeping they just keep moving faster and faster and get more and more hyper. Maybe my brain just can't slow itself down when it is tired either. Either that or I'm just a big chicken.
Your not silly. When we lived in the big city my washing machine was on the back porch. We had a raccoon issue as sometimes we left the cat food out too late. Then there were the search copters that were out enough to give me the shivers and I would really have to decide how badly I needed the wash done.
Where we live now I can get close to a deer in the dark and never see it or know it's there until it "sneezes". We don't have wolves but there are bear, fox and an assortment of things according the scat I sometimes see on my driveway or from what I hear in neighborhood gossip. That is why I have a dog. Though he never seems to see the deer!! I do feel safer with Snoopy about.
Posted by: jodi | July 17, 2008 at 06:00 PM